


At the Land of Always Winter

by tall_wolf_of_tarth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jaime and Brienne are arctic explorers racing to Polar North, Out of character Stannis Baratheon, This is crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25420912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tall_wolf_of_tarth/pseuds/tall_wolf_of_tarth
Summary: Jaime Lannister is racing to the Polar North with Stannis Baratheon's expedition. They have the superior team, new technology, ponies, silverware and champagne in crystal glasses ready for celebrations.Team Stark plans to ski there and eat dog food.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 65





	At the Land of Always Winter

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is loosely based on the Scott and Amundsen rival expeditions to the South Pole. It's also a loose tie-in with my knitting au “Traditional Knitwear of Tarth,” where modern Jaime is looking at the photograph of arctic explorer, Lady Evenstar. I've also mentioned the same Lady Evenstar in my other fic, Tarth Museum, where there is a tank that Lady Brienne Tarth has cut to pieces with the Oathkeeper.

@ Town outside Shadow Tower.

Baratheon-Lannister arctic expedition is stockpiling provisions and purchasing ponies to their upcoming trek to the Polar North.

  
  


“Wench!” Jaime Lannister yells across the yard. Lady Brienne Tarth, the bane of Jaime Lannister's existence, is smearing tar to the bottom of a pair of skis and frowns like she always does at his term of endearment.

“Jaime,” Brienne greets him when he approaches her. She is wearing her grey gansey that sets her blue eyes alight and a pair of woollen trousers. “You're not planning to join Stannis to his expedition, are you?”

“Of course I am, wench! Who wouldn't want to be the first person on the Polar North?”

The wench frowns again.

“Jaime,” she asks him quietly and eyes the uniform he is wearing. “Did you bring your winter gear from the North?

Jaime had to spend two months in the North of the Wall with Lady Brienne during Last Great Winter for a secret rescue mission. Before departing, Catelyn Stark had equipped him with lots of woollen underthings, sealskin gloves and hats, reindeer booties and lots and lots of hand knit woollen socks. It had been a great asset when they were snowed in for a month.

“Of course I brought them,” Jaime admits. He is wearing a pair of those leggings and the gansey Brienne had given him right now under his naval officers uniform as the damn Wall is not warm even in the summer.

“I plan to wear them on the ship while we travel. Stannis wants us in uniform during the actual expedition.” Brienne's eyes go wide.

“And your wolf skin coat? Did you bring that?”

That coat is definitely the ugliest and the warmest thing Jaime Lannister owns. It's currently on Jaime's bunk so he can use it as an extra blanket.

“I have it with me, wench, don't worry. Besides, Stannis has equipped us with the best wool coats that money can buy.”

“Yes, my uncle wrote to me that there was a large wool order from Storm's End.” Brienne nods and looks a little relieved. She picks up a small gas-lit torch and starts heating the tar into her skis.

“But Jaime,” she still worries her lip. “Are you sure that building a railway half-way to Polar North is the best way to go?”

“It certainly is a much better idea than whatever half-cooked stupidity that Stark team is planning to do,” Jaime laughs. “Stannis has used the best scientists in King's Landing to plan this journey.”

Lady Brienne bites her lip. “Who else goes with you?”

“My sweet lady Evenstar, are you trying to spy for the Starks?” She blushes bright red.

“Don't be stupid, Jaime. I'm just worried about you. Not Stannis, mind, he can freeze to death for all I care. Will you have any friends with you?” Jaime feels the warmth pooling at his belly. Brienne always ends up taking care of the others, her maidenly heart soft inside that great stubborn ox of the woman.

“I brought Peck with me, as my adjutant.” She nods then and continues fussing with the skis.

“Why are you fixing the skis anyway, wench? Planning to go skiing in the middle of the summer, are you?”

“Maybe,” she smiles.

When Jaime returns to his lodgings later with his adjutant in tow, he is not entirely surprised to find a full set of wool underthings, shirts, socks and gloves laying on Peck's bed.

***

@ Land of Always Winter.

About one week's journey from Polar North.

Team Baratheon-Lannister is travelling on foot now. Everything is going according to the plan.

  
  


There is a table outside set with nice crockery and real silverware. The wind makes the table cloth flap aggressively and the snow is piling on the plates. Further away two sad ponies are shivering, the snow covering the top of their bowed heads.

“Ser,” Peck, who has heated a can of tomato soup and is distributing that to the plates now, is looking at Jaime who has never been more glad of Tarth merino wool underpants he is wearing. Jaime thinks wistfully of his wolfskin coat and wishes that he could wear it on top of his indigo-dyed overcoat with golden epaulettes, but Stannis had a paroxysm when he saw Jaime wearing the wolfskin last time.

“Ser,” Peck nudges Jaime again. “Me mum always said that one should eat more fatty food in the winter. Why are we eating only vegetables and prunes now, Ser?”

Stannis sighs from the end of the table. “Because of the vitamins and fibre, lad. The vegetarian diet will make us stronger in the extreme climate. Do pour some wine, will you dear boy?”

While Peck is trying to pour Arbor Gold from the frozen bottle to crystal wine glasses, Jaime sighs and takes out a jar of lard from his pocket. He planned to use on the frostbites, but spoons it to his and Pecks plates instead, carefully hiding it from other officers sitting at the table.

“We have the best of technology,” Stannis lectures, not noticing Jaime's treachery. “No one has ever been clever enough to preserve food to tin cans before us. Why, these tomatoes are almost good as fresh,” he exclaims while other officers are poking the frozen grey mush on their beautifully painted soup plates. Their spoons tinkle gracefully when the ice shards in the wind hits the silver.

“I heard that the Stark expedition plans to eat dried reindeer meat and seal blubber. That's dog food!”

The officers laugh merrily, while their bicorn hats are fluttering in the wind. Jaime, who in this point has the oddest need to hold his face with his gloved hands, groans. He would give his right hand for a hot reindeer soup, topped off with a good helping of seal blubber.

“Ser, look!” Peck nudges Jaime again. When he lifts his face from his hand he sees something in the horizon. “Is that the Stark expedition, Ser?”

From the distance, they see a caravan of dog sledges and skiers approaching. Stark team is dressed in seal skin booties, huge puffy wolf skin coats and woolly hats and their sledges are made out of walrus bones. The dire wolves following the skiers are eying poor shivering ponies hungrily. Jaime finds a familiar pair of blue eyes on one particularly tall skier and can't look away. The two teams are staring at each other with disbelief shining on faces on both sides.

Stannis, who is still eating his half-frozen soup remarks to his second officer with a mild shock, “My dear man, look at them! They are dressed like savages, surely that is cheating!”

In this exact moment, Jaime Lannister understands two things. One, team Stark is going to win the race to Polar North and there is nothing he can do about it. And two, he will surely die out here in the Land of Always Winter unless he gets rid of Stannis Baratheon.

***

It takes three days for Jaime to convince himself and Peck to turn back without trying to reach the Pole.

“I always knew that you are a coward, Lannister!” snarls Stannis and it's only his deeply integrated education of a Westerosi gentleman that prevents him of refusing Jaime and Peck their meagre share of provisions. Jaime loads the tin cans and a tent to a sledge, dons his wolfskin coat, orders Peck to wear the other (the one that Brienne gave them before leading Stark Team to North), and bids his team bitter goodby.

“Surely you will regret this decision, Lannister, when we others will toast with champagne for our success,” Stannis laughs and turns away to walk to the Pole.

Peck and Jaime start their long trek back to the base.

“Are we cowards, Ser?” Peck asks him when Jaime divides the last of the lard between their tin of chickpeas. Better be a coward than dead, thinks Jaime and stays quiet.

The snowfall would make it harder to go back but luckily their path is well marked with the items that the Baratheon team has discarded on the way here. Arbor Gold makes good eating with a spoon when you break the bottle open and carefully pick away the glass shards, Peck decides, and the sugar cubes they find among the tea things get them further at least two days.

“Ser,” the boy whispers to him when they are sheltering for the night in the small tent they have. “Should I write a letter to me mum, in case we won't make it?”

“Of course we will make it,” Jaime lies.

“I'm so hungry I could eat a soup made out of Stannis,” the boy groans before falling asleep inside their tiny tent.

Luckily next morning they find a case of brandy that Stannis has lost. It gets them further at least three days. Trekking, when drunk out of their minds, is much more fun, but in the end, even Jaime admits that they are beyond salvation. He sits down in the pile of snow and pulls Peck with him. He hands him a bottle of brandy and opens the last one for himself as well.

“It was worth a try, son,” he slurs to the boy when the bottles are finished. The snow has piled around them and the world is very very white. The warmth of brandy is already disappearing fast.

“What's that, Ser?” Peck points out to the horizon, but Jaime is too far away in the coldness. I wish Brienne was here, he thinks before passing out.

***

When he wakes up, Brienne is there and is pouring soup to Jaime’s mouth.

“Wench, what is this?” he croaks, right after deciding that this is not a hypothermia-induced dream but reality. His toes are too cold for a good dream.

“It’s soup, Jaime.”

“It’s not made out of Stannis, is it?”

“No, dummy, it’s reindeer. We have a surplus of food since we didn’t have to feed the direwolves for days after we found your dead ponies.”

Later Brienne climbs under the furs with him and is hot like a furnace. Jaime is sandwiched between a smelly direwolf and his lady love and never been happier in his life.

“If I knew that dying of hypothermia is the way back to your bed I would have come here earlier,” he sighs happily and pushes his cold toes between Brienne's thighs.

***

Later that year, the leader of the Stark team, Lady Evenstar, is announced as the winner of the race to Polar North. Her paramour Jaime Lannister is among the crowds when she gives her speech of how using indigenous technologies are the future of arctic exploring. Sadly, her suggestions for consuming reindeer meat and seal blubber during expeditions are discarded as nonsense by the unsympathetic audience who still agrees that Stannis Baratheon should have won the race and would have done so, if the Stark team hadn't cheated by eating dog food.

One hundred and twenty years later, the remaining corpses of Team Baratheon, the silverware and the candelabras are found in the snow.

**Author's Note:**

> English really did build a railway to Antarctica and brought the ponies. Everyone in their team died after reaching the South Pole. 
> 
> Amundsen team not only ate the dog food, but also ate the dogs on their way back. Their team survived without any casualties.
> 
> The English are still butthurt about this cheating.


End file.
